do you accept that the gun forces have committed war crimes against their own civilians who are fighting terrorism or are you making the constitution. protecting the syrian people an r.t.a. exclusive r.t. international sundown with the embattled syrian president bashar al assad to find out what he thinks of the civil war in his country up next an interview you won't see anywhere else plus just days after president obama was reelected he's getting down to business with iran by tightening sanctions yet again we'll bring you the latest in this standoff and tell you about the unarmed drone iran fired on last week. and al qaeda operatives in affiliates words the only ones tortured in iraq american contractors were also subjected to this kind of treatment as well but

a chicago court says these men cannot sue for their harsh treatment all about story ahead. good evening it's friday november ninth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for his hour and you're watching r t well throughout the day today our team has been airing a long form interview an exclusive interview with syrian president bashar al assad argy correspondent sophie shevardnadze sat down with him in damascus earlier this week and we want to play with you for you part of that interview now. do you think that at this point they could be talks or diplomacy or we've reached a stage where only the army can do nothing i always believe in diplomacy i always believe in a world of this vision i always believe in dialogue even with people who doesn't understand or doesn't believe in that look you have to keep trying whether you

succeeded or not i think if you always have part of her. success you have to look for the spotted success before you look for the good before you achieve the complete success but you have to be realistic you don't think that only date or can make you achieve something because those people who committed these acts they ought to talk to one of them doesn't believe in doubt or that are they extremists. and the ultra will have been convicted by the court years ago before the crash the crisis and their natural enemy the government because they are going to be detained if you had a normal situation and the other part of them is the people who have been supplied by the outside and they are only they can only be committed to the people or to the government will spend the money and supply them with argument they don't have a choice they don't have a decision they don't own their own decision so you have to be realistic and you

have the third part of the people whether he's. made a tent for politicians who can accept the title that's why we've been in this dialogue for months now even with military and many of them give up their armament and they went back to their normal life do you think for an invasion is imminent i think the price of this invasion if it happened is going. too big more than the whole world can afford because if you have a problem in syria and god this is the supreme court of secularism and cavities in the region and coexistence is it it will have a domino effect that affect the work from the atlantic to the pacific and you know the implication or but i. i don't think. going. to god but if they do so nobody can tell you what's next. if you present do you blame yourself for anything. normally you have to find mistakes you do it with

every different decision otherwise you're not a human what's your biggest mistake i don't remember to read. now but we'll always but i always even before taken the decision i had to go to court to consider that part of it which would be wrong but you cannot tell about your mistake now sometimes especially during crisis you don't see what's right and wrong until you overcome the situation that your so it wouldn't be objective to talk about mistakes because you're still in the middle of the thing you don't have regrets yet. not now is it when whenever things are clear you can talk about your mistakes but you definitely have mistakes or similar if today was fifteenth of march two thousand and eleven that's when the protests started to escalate and grow what would you do differently what i would do or do what i did. mark executive thing to do ask different parties to for to have data and to stand against the good but always

proud to do didn't start as march the cover well done really was marcia's but within those marches you had millions who felt the tweeting disobedience and the army at the same time maybe on the tactical level you could have done something different but as president you're not technically go to take the decision on strategic level which is different. present a lot of how do you see yourself in ten years time. continuing through my country i cannot see myself i can see my company in your time this is where i can feel my full moros yourself in syria differently i have to be in syria you thought of all the position i don't see myself with a president or not that's not my interest i could see myself and these countries if a country cable company more prosperous country that was syrian president bashar al assad well earlier today i have a chance to speak to sophie shevardnadze about her experience of being in syria and

of sitting down with president assad i asked her first how she was able to land the interview in the first place. well we've been trying to get this interview from the day conflict has started to ask later actually. we spoke to a woman who is in charge of the press ministry in syria she was here in moscow on an official visit that was about six months ago so after we interviewed her we also asked her for an interview but we never got a definite answer and then all the sudden probably a month and a half or so ago they called us from presence of ministration and they told us willing to go with and they were ready to receive us the rest was all about figure out the dates and the duration of our stay in syria and we should point out the german journalist jurgen towton hoffer did interview assad a few months ago and a lot of critics pointed out the they were giving you know this german journalist was giving mr assad a platform for his propaganda what is your response to that well if you want to

know my personal take on that i think no matter who goes to interview assad it's going to cause a lot of noise and a lot of uproar just because he's such a controversial figure for the rest of the world i don't think i actually saw that interview of the german gentleman and his questions were very much fact based not at all complacent to us. the rest is all of you wouldn't want to hear what our side has to say which i believe some people are definitely interested in specially when it has to do with such a complicated conflict. like in syria because things aren't as black and white as we see in the media there are just so many shades of gray so i think it's worth knowing both sides of the story and that's a really good point and that's why we wanted to talk to you as well so if you were in the room with this person did you get the feeling that mr assad is that all conflicted or remorseful about the death and devastation that's happening right now

in his country. i want to be able to answer that because i don't know this is a man who actually controls very well he's very much in charge of emotions. when i spoke to him before they him to you i had a chance to speak with him for ten fifteen minutes he seemed very down to earth this is not a guy who saw from. the earth some other leader he's definitely not crazy he's very well read and educated and i was very surprised to find that out. he's very well informed contrary to what many people may think i think. barbara walters interview for a.b.c. that was recorded probably really freaked him out because barbara was asking him precise questions about precise examples of a cartoonist got his arms broken or. who got his throat slashed and he really wasn't aware of those. things that she was telling him i think that

freaked him out so much that after that he asked to be informed of everything that's going on so i do believe he understands how complicated this situation is do i think is remorseful i don't know the only thing that i gathered from this interview is that this is a man who is determined to stay there. till the death if that's what it takes. barbara walters interview and. it was a little more than a year ago and she was spoken to about another anchor on her network on a.b.c. about her experience and i want to play really quick what she said. you really. want george there were no restrictions there were no god. and you question. the dictated by accident. ophthalmologist he studied medicine in england he. rushed into the room. again that was more than a little more than a year ago just goes to show sort of how much has changed both inside of syria and

of course the person perspective around the world but barbara walters says this is a man who is mild man. he's a dictator by accident was that your impression. i think this is a man who is the president by someone else's choice i think he never wanted to be head of syria to start with so whatever happens to him after that is not his choice and i don't think he ever had a choice to start with just like now i think his choices that he doesn't have any choice his family still in damascus his kids who are nine six and seven i think and they go to public school they're. trying to show people that he's not running away and his family's with them no matter what. it's very hard for me to to tell you whether i sympathize see him as a leader or not because things are so much complicated but do i think someone that you could talk to if he wanted to yes definitely and he's definitely in the west to

what extent is the knowledge that he has you said he wanted to be made aware of everything happening in his country so if that is in fact happening if he is in fact being told of everyone killed fighting for him fighting against his government how much is that knowledge translating into you know a motion or action that he plans to take. i think is aware of everything that's going on in this country i think he's aware of atrocities that are taking place on both sides. when i ask him personally if he accepted the fact that the government army is committing war crimes against his own civilians he said something along the lines that we you know this is war so probably there are going to be crimes committed but you know we're going to deal with it and prosecute people after it's all done and of course six centuries on the war crimes that the syrian free syrian army fighters are committing. i cannot watch for any part of scene is that when i

arrive to damascus there were two to three terrorists a day first one happened two hundred meters away from where i was standing second one when i dare to go into the city to go to the market and you know by and by and speak to people it was time when the elementary school kids were coming on and streets and they were flooding this little narrow streets and i find that ten minutes away from where i was standing a bomb went off and killed eleven to twelve kids just like that from elementary school they were leaving from school to go home so i think. it's very one sided to say that he's committing crimes and his government forces are committing crimes and everyone else is fighting for freedom because for one thing that really marked me is how much syrian people are scared that fundamentalists will come to power and will make them leave under fundamentalist islam law because one thing that syria isn't and that's fundamentalists because all we've always been a secular country where lots of religious divisions and sects have lived

alongside each other in peace and harmony. that was artie's own sophie shevardnadze . we want to talk now about some new developments in terms of the united states' relationship with iran yesterday pentagon officials confirmed that an american military surveillance drone flying over the persian gulf was shot at by iranian warplanes last week because of the predator drone was not hit and was flying in international air space on a routine mission there's also been another shift inside iran as well the country announced a ban on imports of about seventy five so-called luxury products we're talking fancy high end cars as well as everyday items like coffee and toilet paper i talk more about this from a bigger picture level with jamal policy director for the national iranian american council and we first talked about the impact of sanctions upon those iranian people . the sanctions are having a massive impact especially over the past two months we've seen that there's

a humanitarian impact on particularly medicine inside of iran there are shortages of cancer medicine of basically ordinary iranians are complaining that they are not able to get just basic and exotic medicines that they need to survive the reason for this is that. u.s. the u.s. technically allows for medicine to be exploited to iran there's a general license for that but we have cut off all banking transactions with iran so if there's a pharmaceutical company who wants to send medicine they can actually find a way to facilitate that transaction and so while we may say we don't want to there to be a humanitarian impact there is unless we actually take action to fix that and frankly there are people in the united states who are pushing hard for these sanctions that really do feel that punishing ordinary people is what these sanctions should be doing because the goal is not to change the iranian government's decision making is

to actually. leverage ordinary civilians against the iranian government and threaten to topple the government by inciting you know food riots or you know people who are happy because they can you know their grandparents are dying and can't get medicine but there has been some talk to mall that at least you know initially iranian officials do seem to be ready to at least discuss proposals to roll back some of the country's uranium enrichment and this is. for the u.s. and european allies kind of the goal isn't this precisely why they're you know imposing these harsh sanctions on them so you know if people you know if these officials inside iran are ready to kind of come to the table that's mission accomplished right well it's mission accomplished if first of all if we actually do leverage the sanctions if we actually do come to the table and say ok iran you and your. a higher level enrichment the original twenty percent and in exchange we are

willing to ease the sanctions the problem is we don't know if that's actually going to happen we know that the u.s. has signaled that they may be willing to do that the iranians have signaled they may be willing to do that there are plenty of spoilers inside of another of the no injuries. here in the u.s. congress every time the u.s. and iran have talked a letter comes out of congress that says don't don't use the sanctions do not give up the sanctions until we get the total capitulation by the iranians we need to go big and have an ultimatum that the iranians need to give up their entire program and then we can consider easing the sanctions that's problematic that's not a way that you can negotiate the other thing that just how most things work in terms of government in terms of diplomacy usually it's a lot of baby steps a little bit of time not these huge capitulation. but yes absolutely and especially i mean you talk about baby steps we only have you know we don't have a sustained diplomatic process to actually take those baby steps so the idea that

we need to have a complete capitulation by iran in a couple of sit downs is unrealistic i would also just point out that what we're talking about now is. getting a deal that we could have gotten many years ago before we got the sanctions the iranians in two thousand and ten came to the table and said they wanted to make a deal on shipping out some of their regiment this was before they were doing the higher level enrichment and instead of pursuing that deal we decided to go forward with sanctions and now what we're talking about was the reasoning behind that the reasoning was that we had you know we had gone to the u.n. the u.s. had gone the u.n. and finally won the approval from the p five states for a new round of sanctions and early two thousand and ten and when that happened that's when the iranians came and said let's make a deal. before that happens and the united states has invested so much diplomatic time. and capital into the sanctions they were a fork in the road and they decided to go with the sanctions instead of getting the

deal if we had taken that deal we would be in a much better position than we are now what we're talking about is really getting back to the point where iran is not doing the higher level enrichment that they started after we went forward with the sanctions so this notion that the sanctions have somehow put us in a better position i think is doesn't quite add up in terms of basic logic and we need to recognize that we need to now that we have put these sanctions in place now that iran has escalated in terms of their enrichment both sides need to be willing to go in the opposite direction and make some compromises and that's the question of whether or not we can actually do that what about this information jamal that a predator drone was shot at by an iranian warplane this happened before election day but nobody seemed to say anything about it confirm it or talk about it at all and tell afterwards i guess talk about the political implications both here and on an international level well the political implications i think are. are so

significant that it's not a surprise that this wasn't brought up before the elections and there's no you know the u.s. didn't bring it up and iran didn't bring it up you know you're on wait until the u.s. envoy all this information before they started talking about it on their side and the reason is that you know there are there is not a desire for war by the people who are making the decisions i firmly believe the supreme leader the president they don't want war there are people on both sides of this who are actively trying to prevent war while at the same time escalating putting the pressure turning the pressure up and the problem is that as we as we turn up the heat as the u.s. deploys aircraft carriers and takes part in the largest military exercises in the persian gulf as we did just just a couple months ago and as the iran. and escalate by installing new centrifuges in

their facilities and other things like that how long can we how can how long can we do this how long can we turn the heat up and still allow cooler heads to prevail like we saw with this incident which had there been a miscalculation we could have seen a full blown military confrontation erupt from this from this incident so i think both sides are very trying to be careful to not allow this to become causes belli for an actual war between the u.s. and iran what's your sense in terms of this presidential election is finally over do you get a sense that the iranian people are happy that president obama will be getting a second term do you feel like the majority of the country was hoping for a change in america or do they just not care at all you know my sense just anecdotally and you know is that everybody who didn't want to see a war is relieved i think that. the romney campaign's policies

weren't necessarily different than obama's but there was just there was definitely a willingness to talk about military options and to at least rhetorically turn up that pressure because a lot of the people that were running that campaign and behind the campaign were a lot of the same people that agitated for war with iraq because there was this perception that netanyahu very much wanted romney to win in order to have a more hawkish u.s. approach to iran i think that. the people of iran are relieved that there's not going to be a war but at the same time are very disappointed with what the first term of obama look like because now they are suffering under these sanctions and it's not a very hopeful situation probably not overly optimistic one way or the other jamal obviously policy director of the national iranian american council thanks so much for joining us. and that was story from chicago where a federal appeals court ruled on how responsible government higher ups like for example donald rumsfeld are for their actions of their underlings back in two

thousand and six two american military contractors donald vance and nathan or tell claim they were detained and tortured in iraq after they accuse their iraqi run employer of illegally running guns the quote interrogation methods used on vance in our intel allegedly included solitary confinement extreme temperatures and so-called walling in which the men were blindfolded and walked into walls vance and tried to sue donald rumsfeld the secretary of defense at the time for personally approving of these interrogation methods and last year a federal court ruled the men had standing to do so however yesterday's eight to three ruling on appeal said that the man had no grounds for to sue rumsfeld because he was not personally responsible for the subordinates crossing the line rumsfeld's attorney of course saw this as a good thing saying quote this was not about rumsfeld at all it was about future decision makers who need to be able to deal with national security issues without having to worry they'll be sued for decisions that they made after they leave

office. however the dissenting opinion on the case was alarmed at the blanket immunity offered to people like rumsfeld judge david hamilton said quote the disparity after abuse to our government and to our legal system a degree of hypocrisy that is breathtaking the men are considering appealing the decision the supreme court could ultimately decide whether our leaders should be held personally responsible for the life and death decisions they make in a professional capacity. and now on to a story we've been covering throughout the election c.e.o.'s trying to tell their employees who to vote for almost every time the boss said that if obama were reelected people would lose their jobs and it seems at least one c.e.o. is making good on his threats you might remember robert e. murray the c.e.o. of the ohio based coal company murray energy here's a refresher how he used his company to support romney during the campaign basically some of the workers were not happy about having to go to that rally and they

weren't happy about their shift being canceled and and being asked to attend so they complained to a radio host in west virginia who asked rob moore who is the c.f.o. of murray energy about that on the air and moore said that that nobody was forced to go but yet it was mandatory. well the day after the election murray read a prayer to his staff right before he laid off more than one hundred fifty employees murray energy is the largest privately owned coal mining company in the country he said that obama's administration quote war on coal necessitated the layoffs so what was the prayer quote lord please forgive me and anyone with me in murray energy corporation for the decisions that we are now forced to make to preserve the very existence of any of the enterprises that you have helped us build we ask for your guidance in this drastic time with the drastic decisions that will be made to have

any hope of our survival as an american business enterprise. well of course whether obama's policies are actually harming his business or whether he's just trying to follow through on election season threats remains to be seen. well everyone we made it november sixth has come and gone our television screens are now inundated with holiday commercials instead of political ones and as always life will go on so the last few days since the election you've probably heard from plenty of politicians and pundits about what went wrong and what went right while we want to ignore the strategize in chief and instead hear your thoughts so laurie harshness with the resident spoke to regular people in new york city about what they thought about the next four years. the us presidential election is finally over now would this week let's

talk about bad did you vote are you happy with the outcome. what do you expect to change in the next four years. i guess. for you make things right on own or just was going to choose i didn't vote i didn't really care why not i didn't even know like what anybody stood for just not something that interests me i just go with the flow so you don't think it affects your everyday life oh it sure does. i'm sure it does but do i have much control over it and it really feel that what voting is the only way that you can control i saw him feel like i had that much control no i didn't why not i was torn between the two so i figured to be bashed in my own interest but there were more than two running you could have voted for someone else and no i do well she's running there were more the people that were running for the presidency and you didn't even know it. those two look parties are too strong and they're entrenched and i don't think

you can change that but what about if we start really trying to separate money from politic. put solutions like that on the table the greatest tool we'll have is the right to vote. these people out do you think though there might be room for a third party come two thousand and sixteen. well i vote green whenever i can sort of hoping they can do something but it's you know it's a tough road to go you know what's it going to take for the american people to wake up and realize there's more than two parties. i'm not sure i sometimes think we put a lot of pressure on the president and a lot of the change has to come from with us as well you know we can't rely on him one hundred percent you know you've got to you've got to get up in the morning and you've got to work for your country yourself you can't rely on one man to do it all for you i think the only people in this country that have ever really been able to make a difference usually end up dead. that is so sad sad but true but. do you think it'll ever change. i would hope it would i don't know what the catalyst for that

will be but do you think you and i can be a catalyst don't you think that people can demand more and make a change. i'd like to think that so do you think that we can make people more aware in these four years that we have until the next election i think so how do we do that. that's a good question we're doing it right now we are whether or not you expect anything to change in the u.s. the bottom line is real change is probably not going to start with the president in visioning it it's going to start with the people demanding it. well that's going to do it for the news for tonight but be sure to tune in next week veteran's day is coming up on monday a holiday that's perhaps better marked by furniture sales than by remembrance ceremonies and the men and women who serve this nation oftentimes come home to fight other battles physical and mental ones not to mention foreclosure and

unemployment we will take you to battleground america. and the occupy movement has found a new target to aim its anger at this time protesters will return to zuccotti park to protest debt and to raise money to help the needy when the government will not and freedom of expression meet your match mexico has banned music artists from rapping about the ongoing drug war and the music that glorifies the cartels or illicit drugs south of the border can land you in big trouble with local authorities next week we'll tell you about the day the music died those are just a few of the stories we'll have in store for you next week along with much more news and in-depth interviews so keep it tuned right here to our t.v. well that's going to do it for us for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america or you can always check out our web site a lot of times there are stories there that we didn't have time to get to that web address is r t dot com.